A statue of King Richard III by James Walter Butler RA stands in Castle Gardens, off St Nicholas Circle. The statue is in bronze, and was unveiled on 31 July 1980 by Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester. The statue was commissioned and contributed by members of the Richard III Society. The body of King Richard III is believed to be buried close to the site of this statue by the River Soar in Leicester Bosworth Field in Leicestershire, was the penultimate battle in the Wars of the Roses, a civil war between the House of Lancaster and the House of York that raged across England in the 15th century. Fought on 22 August 1485, the battle was won by Lancastrian Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who by his victory and subsequent marriage to a Yorkist princess became the first English monarch of the Tudor dynasty. His opponent Richard III, the last King of England from the House of York, was killed during the battle. Historians consider the battle to mark the end of the Plantagenet dynasty, making it one of the defining moments of English history. Literature, from the 15th to 18th centuries, glamorised the conflict as a victory of good over evil—it forms the finale of William Shakespeare's play about Richard's rise and fall.